Today
we will be covering famous classics of Chinese and Japanese martial
arts. The first is the Chinese Art of War of Sunzi. The second and
third are the two most revered books of samurai self-discipline,
Musashi’s Book of Five Rings and Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure.
Sunzi & The Art of War
Sunzi
(Master Sun, ‘Sun Tzu’ in the old Wade-Giles), also known as Sun Wu, is
the great ancient master of strategy and the philosophy of warfare.
Based on the types of warfare described in his Art of War, he is
thought to have lived during the late Spring and Autumn period or early
Warring States period around 500 BCE, but his dates are unknown and his
life made into legend. It is also possible that Sunzi’s descendant Sun
Bin, himself a military strategist, may have been mixed together with
the life and legend of Sunzi.
One
story often told, which modern historians consider to be pure legend,
goes that the King of Wu decided to test Sunzi before accepting him as
general of his armies, asking him to train his concubines in military
drill with spears to show his efficiency. Sunzi appointed the king’s
two most favorite as officers, and gave the order to face right. The
concubines all giggled. Sunzi told the king that the officers were at
fault, and ordered them executed. The king protested, but Sunzi argued
that this was the only way in war to ensure complete discipline. After
that, the concubines learned with remarkable speed and skill.
During
the Warring States/Hundred Philosophers period, The Art of War became
the most widely read work on military strategy in the seven states who
sought control of what is today Eastern China. The Qin considered the
work critical in the ending of the Warring States period and the
unification of China. As with the Confucian and Daoist classics, the
book had reached its final form by the time of the Han dynasty. The Art
of War covers not simply just maneuvers in war, but also methods of
propaganda, deceit, and political control. Like Confucius’ four books
and the later Neo-Confucian classics, it was required reading for
obtaining a government position, particularly for a position in the
military.
The
Art of War has had a wide influence on warfare, both ancient and
modern. Introduced in Japan in 760 CE, it was a favorite of shoguns and
samurai long before the unification of Japan. Napoleon read and used
the work, as did Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. It is today required
reading for US Military Intelligence and CIA officers.
Some
of Sunzi’s central teachings are focused on gathering intelligence and
practicing deceit (or counter-intelligence), knowing everything about
the enemy but preventing the enemy from knowing anything about yourself.
He argues that sheer numbers give no advantage, and it is far better
to out-think than to out-fight. Ho Chi Minh’s use of the Art of War in
repelling the far superior American soldiers and firepower during the
Vietnam War brought the book into use by the US military and
intelligence services. One tactic specifically used was staying close
and inter-meshed with the enemy when the enemy has superior firepower.
This works just as well against bows and crossbows as it does against
cluster bombs and napalm, as the enemy can not fire on you without
hitting their own troops as well.
In
the first verses of the text, Sunzi says that the first rule of
warfare, to be at one with the way of warfare, is for the leaders and
people to be of one mind. This has two implications. First, keeping
one’s own troops and civilians believing in the leaders is first and
foremost, in times of peace and war through aid and propaganda. Second,
in war one should work thought deceit, propaganda and any other means
to disenchant the enemy troops and civilians. The psychological game is
more important than the physical fight. You should not only know how
to boost morale and engage in psychological warfare, you should learn to
judge your enemy’s ability to boost morale and engage in psychological
warfare, for if they are superior at the psychological game you will
likely not withstand a physical fight.
One
tactic Sunzi taught to win the psychological game was moving troops
after every assault, commonly employed in guerrilla warfare such as that
employed by the Southern Confederate army against the Northern Union
army, as well as the Vietcong against the United States. For much of
European history, this tactic was considered dishonorable and armies
would march in plain sight toward each other, but today it is standard
practice accross the world. The change was particularly motivated by
the invention of the rifle during the American Civil War and the
invention of the machine gun used in WWI. If the enemy launches a full
assault against a specific area, it is often wise to let them advance,
move, and then attack from the sides or from behind. This is similar to
the idea behind Aikido, discussed with Daoism. If the enemy has
superior strength or striking power, you move out of the way to keep
them off balance.
Not
only should you change position, but continuously change tactics as
well. Unconventional tactics that continue to shift situation by
situation may make for difficult planning, but they keep the enemy
guessing. Sunzi says, “I never repeat the means whereby I achieve
victory, but responsively adjust my positions continuously”. He employs
the Daoist metaphor of being like water, saying that just as water
produces currents according to the terrain it crosses, an army must
respond fluidly to the enemy to be victorious.
Another
psychological tactic that meshes well with Daoist teachings is to
appear to be the opposite of what you are. If you are strong, appear
weak. If you are far, appear near. If you are active, appear to be
inactive. This will not only cause the enemy to put ineffective actions
and strategies into play, but in the long run keep them guessing and
always confused. Equally and oppositely, one should encourage the enemy
to be as one-sided as possible. If the enemy is greedy, tempt them so
they act on it and are drawn out. if the enemy is angry, provoke them
to make them even angrier. If the enemy is strong, avoid them and allow
them to wear themselves down through continuous advancement. In the
Dao De Jing of Laozi, it says what one wants to defeat one should allow
to grow strong.
Another
teaching of Sunzi that fits well with the Daoist teaching of wu-wei
(non-action) is that one should always attempt to win with the least
amount of fighting possible, and the best way to win is to win without
fighting at all. This boosts morale and spares wasting resources. If
you are more efficient at this than your enemy, you can outlast their
strength. While one should allow one’s enemy to grow strong to wear
them down, one should wait for a moment of weakness to attack, and then
gain the upper hand as quickly as possible so that strength and
resources are not wasted. A prolonged war wears down your troops as
well as the morale of the citizens. Long periods of warfare lead to
poverty among the citizens and inflation for the economy, which can not
long endure before rebellions divide one’s lands from within.
Sunzi
says it is wise to eat the enemy’s food and use the enemy’s resources,
and that one bushel of the enemy’s grain is equivalent to twenty of
one’s own. One famous example from Chinese warfare is found in the
Battle of Red Cliffs at the end of the Han Dynasty. Zhuge Liang told
his superior that he could provide ten thousand arrows in three days, a
task that seemed impossible. He used the three days to attach bundles
of straw to a fleet of ships, and then he sailed these ships toward the
enemy with a small armored crew. The enemy, believing the boasts to be
full of troops, fired barrage after barrage of arrows at the boats,
which were then recalled, along with the arrows stuck in the straw.
These arrows were now used against the enemy themselves, who had far
fewer arrows then they had before. Sunzi argued that using the enemy’s
troops was also wise, enticing them to change sides and then treating
them well. It is also wise to defeat the enemy without destroying them,
keeping their armies, population and lands intact. This not only
allows for more spoils, but breeds less resentment in the population one
has conquered.
A
big fan of using spies, as well as paying the enemy’s spies well to
become double agents, Sunzi says that foreknowledge, knowing what will
happen before it happens, cannot be learned from ghosts and spirits, but
from spies, who are clearly worth their pay given what an army costs
and the value of psychology over strength. Double agents, enemy spies
discovered and then used to give false information back to the enemy who
does not know the spies have been discovered and turned, should be paid
the most, as they are the most valuable.
The Cultural Myth of Bushido
In
the article (the last selection in your reader) Death and Bushido,
Hurst argues that a modern mythology has grown since World War II in
Japan, America and elsewhere about bushido, the supposedly suicidal
samurai code. Nitobe Inazo (1862 - 1933), who was educated by Americans
and had a very poor understanding of Japanese history and culture,
wrote the international best-seller Bushido: The Soul of Japan in 1899
to introduce Americans to the culture he was actively abandoning.
Nitobe believed that he was coining a new word, ‘bushido’, for the code
of the medieval samurai. The word does appear in the Hagakure, but
this is rare. Unfortunately, Nitobe was very inaccurate and overly
romantic in emphasizing a culture of honor, death and suicide as
distinctly Japanese.
The
Hagakure of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, which we will turn to shortly, was held
up by Nitobe as the samurai classic, the book that tells us “the way of
the samurai is found in death”, and that samurai live to serve their
master and commit suicide whenever this becomes impossible.
Unfortunately for Nitobe, Tsunetomo was an eccentric who was describing
his personal philosophy and teachings he hoped to pass on to his clan,
not the common culture of feudal Japan. Courage in the face of death
and loyalty are prized in warriors the world over, and they were values
highly prized in Neo-Confucianism, but recklessly accepting death was
not. Tsunetomo himself wished to commit suicide after the death of his
lord but he was ordered not to by the Shogun. Retiring as a Buddhist
priest, he then wrote the Hagakure. After the death of a lord, it was
far more common for samurai to become ronin, wandering master-less
samurai, until finding employment with another lord. Tsunetomo says
becoming a ronin is despicable, and is a practice that has unfortunately
become common in his own time unlike in the glorious past, but he is
likely mistaken and projecting his own views.
There
was no common Japanese code for samurai, and the cultural coherence
they shared was a mixture of Neo-Confucianism and Zen Buddhism, along
with an appreciation of Daoism. There were samurai who were devoted to
Zen, both the Soto and Rinzai traditions, to Pure Land Buddhist
traditions, as well as to orthodox Neo-Confucianism and the unorthodox
Wang Yangming school, but there were none who were devoted to a
tradition known as “Bushido”.
When
Japanese Nationalism surged between WWI and WWII, when Japan was
fighting wars with China and Russia, Nitobe’s book became popular with
Nationalists who embraced bushido as a new religion. This reached its
peak in WWII, when Japan was fighting America in the Pacific, sometimes
using suicidal kamikaze pilots to take out battleships and aircraft
carriers. This encouraged the belief in America that the Japanese are a
culture obsessed with death and willing to commit suicide at the drop
of a hat, views that fit nicely with a racist understanding that Asian
culture, unlike Western culture, finds the individual entirely
dispensable. This is found in James Clavell’s novel Shogun, where many
samurai characters kill cruelly with little emotion and often see
suicide as an honorable solution to political problems. In the
documentary Hearts and Minds, a film about American propaganda during
the Vietnam war, a general tells the television camera that in the
Orient, life is cheap and not valued as in the West, which is why
bombing villages of women and children is unfortunate but necessary in a
battle against Asian people. There are similar things being said about
Muslims by generals and pro-war pundits in America today. One news
anchor said that suicide bombers show us that Muslims do not care about
their children the way that Western people do, and so they are
unfortunately put in war’s way and become casualties of bombing runs.
As
Hurst points out, many of the most famous battles of feudal Japan were
decided by a defection, of a major player switching allegiances. Just
as Sunzi says, in war defectors, especially nobles and their houses, are
highly prized, encouraged and rewarded. It appears that the medieval
Japanese valued both loyalty and abandoning loyalty for personal gain,
just like the rest of humanity. It is often forgotten that when
particular values such as loyalty are highly praised it is precisely
because their opposite vices are all too common.
Seppuku,
Japanese ritual suicide, did exist but was uncommon. It was not a
solution to political disgrace, but typically practiced as a way of
avoiding enemy capture, torture and execution. Some samurai did
practice junshi, committing suicide to follow their lord in death, but
this was also rare. Seppuku was a punishment in the Tokugawa period,
and samurai who had or were suspected of committed crimes were sometimes
ordered to commit suicide, but this was hardly embraced by the samurai.
Similarly, much has been made of kirisute gomen in Tokugawa times, the
practice of testing a blade on a random peasant passing by as if
samurai had this common privilege, but historians today find almost no
credible instances of this practice.
Musashi’s Book of Five Rings
Miyamoto
Musashi (1584 - 1645) is possibly the most famous samurai in Japanese
and world history. He is famous for his dueling record (supposedly only
losing once), his invention of a two sword fighting style, and as the
author of his strategy guide The Book of Five Rings. A follower of Zen
Buddhism, he practiced zazen sitting meditation for decades. His life
was celebrated in the famous but somewhat fictional 1935 novel Musashi
by Eiji Yoshikawa. My father had a copy of this gigantic book (three
inches thick) when I was growing up and he would tell me stories of
Musashi’s duels. In WWII, the Japanese named one of their most powerful
battleships the Musashi, and today there is a Playstation game by the
same name.
Musashi’s
two sword style was invented as he was fleeing a fortress and fighting
off a crowd, as he was forced to draw his second sword to defend
himself. Traditionally, the second sword would only be drawn if the
first sword was lost.
Musashi
was known to keep his opponents waiting and arrive late to make them
upset and give them time to be unsettled by the thought of possible
death. Duels were fought with a variety of weapons, but Musashi always
chose the sword. Several of his duels were fought in front of the
Shogun. Most duels would not be fought to the death but ended after the
first blow was successfully struck, unless a duel to the death was
agreed upon by both opponents.
Musashi’s
most famous duel was with Sasaki Kojiro, known as the demon of the
western provinces, on Funajima Island. There are conflicting stories
about the duel, much which may be myth. Today there is a statue on the
island commemorating the duel, as well as a statue of a boat at the
place Musashi set sail for the island. According to the legend, Musashi
agreed to duel Kojiro to the death, and the duel preoccupied him so
much that he hopped in the boat without his swords. As he was rowed to
the island, he carved a wooden sword out of a spare oar. He arrived
late, as usual, infuriating the comrades of Kojiro. According to one
account, Musashi stepped of the boat, wordlessly charged at Kojiro,
struck him in the head with a single blow, killing him, then stepped
back onto the boat and left with the turning tide to avoid Kojiro’s
comrades. In the novel, Kojiro throws his sheath away into the surf as
Musashi steps off the boat. Musashi says, “Kojiro, you’ve already
lost”. Kojiro, perplexed, asks why. Musashi replies that Kojiro must
not think he has any more use for his sword. Clearly, Kojiro meant to
intimidate Musashi with his show of total disregard, but Musashi,
playing the mental game as Sunzi recommends, turns this confidence into
doubt to use his opponent’s show against him.
In
his Book of Five Rings, Musashi says that a great warrior is a well
rounded person who studies the arts and tea ceremony as well as a wide
variety of martial arts. Musashi was himself a painter, and there are
several of his works that remain today including his famous Kingfisher
Perched in a Dead Tree. He argues that learning many things enriches
and compliments each particular skill. There is the Buddha’s way of
salvation, Confucius’ way of learning, and the many ways of the arts and
the martial arts. Each individual practices the ways that they find
pleasing.
Musashi
writes that the way of the warrior is the way of both the pen and the
sword, of studying strategy as well as physical fighting. The warrior
uses the pen and sword to gain resolute acceptance of death, to be able
to die for the cause. Anyone of any station in life can die for a
cause, but it is the warrior’s profession. Musashi compares a master
carpenter planning and building a house to a warrior who strategically
plans and physically fights battles and duels.
The
five rings, each a chapter of the work, are the five elements of
Buddhist cosmology. Earth concerns strategy, like a map of the terrain.
Water concerns spirit, to become fluid to react to the situation.
Fire concerns fighting, having the courage and skill to win. Wind
concerns the past traditions and schools of strategy, the things said by
those of the past. Finally, Void, the fifth element that binds the
others together as particular things, the highest element, is the
eternal way of things, what one must become like to act naturally.
Musashi
says that timing is critical to everything, and that all five books are
chiefly concerned with timing. Learning and training allows one to
gain the ability to win with the eye as well as the arm. This is
interesting advice from a guy who purposefully arrives late. Opponents,
like Kojiro’s comrades, would say Musashi is dishonorable and
irresponsible, a poor teacher of timing, but Musashi would say that
using lateness as a strategy, developing patience and using inaction (a
good example of Daoist wu-wei) is mastery of timing.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure
In
the Hagakure (In the Shadow of the Leaves) of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, there
are many lessons to be learned. Like Musashi, he repeatedly references
Confucius and the Buddha. Unlike Musashi, Tsunetomo repeatedly argues
that a warrior should not be an artist or waste time rounding themselves
out, but rather focus on virtue and martial arts. Virtue includes not
only courage, but also compassion for all people and being in harmony
with the way of all things.
In
the opening passages, Tsunetomo writes, “The Way of the samurai is
found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick
choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and
advance. To say that dying without reaching one’s aim is to die a dog’s
death is the frivolous way of the sophisticated. When pressed with the
choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one’s aim...To die
without gaining one’s aim IS a dog’s death and fanaticism, but there is
no shame in this. This is the substance of the way of the samurai.”
Tsunetomo
argues that a warrior should devote himself to his lord and lose all
self-interest. This seems unobtainable, but it is “right before your
eyes” and anyone can become excellent the very moment it is completely
accepted. He claims that with only two or three such devoted, an entire
state can be protected.
He
says that it is bad to yawn in front of others, and to stop oneself
from yawning one should rub one’s forehead upwards or lick one’s lips
while keeping one’s mouth closed.
In
an interesting passage, he says that fish will not live in water that
is too clear and prefer to hide under duckweed. In the same way, the
population will “live in tranquility if certain matters are a bit
overlooked or left unheard”.
He
quotes Master Yagyu, saying, “I do not know the way to defeat others,
but the way to defeat myself”. In an almost direct quote from Laozi’s
Dao De Jing, he says that matters of great concern should be taken
lightly, and matters of little concern should be treated seriously. If
one takes small things seriously, then everything will be in order when
disaster strikes and one will be at peace and have the patience and
skill one needs.
He
argues that one should not promote those who have not committed
mistakes, but promote those who have made and corrected their mistakes.
Those who have never made mistakes are dangerous, while those who have
corrected their mistakes show repentance and have gained valuable
experience.
Tsunetomo
says there is something to be learned in a rainstorm that applies to
everything in life. If a person doesn’t want to get wet, they hurry and
try to walk under shelter but get soaked anyway. The person who knows
and accepts they are going to get soaked gets just as wet, but walks
without fear and concern. Accepting the inevitability of mistakes, pain
and betrayal frees the mind to see the immediate. This is a wonderful
mix of Buddhist tranquility and Daoist non-action.
He
argues that when something strange happens, it is ridiculous to say
that it is a mystery or an omen of something to come. All things,
including solar eclipses, are simply the natural activities of Yin and
Yang, so an eclipse happening every one hundred years is no more
mysterious or ominous than the sun rising and setting every day. A
sunrise would seem strange and mysterious if it happened only every
hundred years. Mystery is created in the mind.
He
argues that calculating people are contemptible, and all decisions
should be made within the space of seven breaths. In the most trivial
matters one’s heart can be clearly seen, and the way to handle anything
is found in the smallest of things.
